Prof. Diego Abenante holds a BA in Political Science (Trieste, 1993), a MA in Modern History (London, 1994) and a Ph.D. in History of the extra-European countries (Pisa, 1998). He is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Trieste, where he teaches South Asian and Islamic history. His research interests are the history of Islam in South Asia, with particular reference to the impact of “modernity”; he is also interested in contemporary politics in Pakistan and Afghanistan with special focus on Islamic parties. He has been an invited Researcher at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (Paris), has given seminars at INALCO (Paris), Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi), Bahauddin Zakariya University (Multan), Islamabad University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and a member of the European Association of South Asian Studies.